The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, or the SDGs, remind us of another commonly used acronym: a BHAG, or Big Hairy Audacious Goal. We at Give2Asia like that the nonprofit sector has a set of BHAGs to aspire toward for several reasons:

the SDGs provide a much-needed common set of terms, targets, and metrics for us to use across organizations and to align our work with global efforts

they allow for new discussions to happen around development successes and failures, and create opportunities for cross-sector partnerships

We are taking first step to participate in these goals by tracking relevant Give2Asia projects against the SDGs and offering transparency on how our work aligns. While the SDGs are first and foremost a set of goals for governments and large multilateral actors - neither of which applies to Give2Asia - we see a role for Give2Asia in raising awareness of the goals within the private philanthropy community. Most importantly, we invite our partners and donors to pay attention to how their work also aligns with the SDGs.

Measuring Up IN 2017

The Process

The first step in tracking Give2Asia's alignment with the SDGs is determining what grants align most with each of the 17 goals. Out of our roughly $27 million in total 2017 grants, our team identified over half that clearly aligned with a specific SDG.

Note that this tracking is being done internally at Give2Asia and is not being reported up to the United Nations. This is partly due to the fact that Give2Asia works in partnership with other donors who may be tracking and reporting separately. Note also that we only tagged each project with a single SDG even though many could actually be seen to address multiple goals. This was done to ensure that there was no possibility for double-counting our projects. We welcome feedback from others for how we might improve Give2Asia's tracking in the future.

Here is how our grant making in 2017 looks in the context of the SDGs:

The Numbers

267 GrantS TOTALING US$14 million

Of the US$14 million in 2017 grants that we tracked as relevant to the SDGs, 80 percent (or US$ 11.4 million) were concentrated in five SDGs in particular: Goals 3, 4, 8, 9 and 11. We've further broken down the top three SDGs below to reveal where these funds were distributed.

#4: Quality Education

More than one-third of our 2017 funding was channeled into SDG #4: Quality Education. The 2030 targets for this goal include:

all girls and boys completing free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes

equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university

all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieving literacy and numeracy

all learners acquiring the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development

#9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

developing quality, reliable, sustainable and resilient infrastructure, including regional and transborder infrastructure, to support economic development and human well-being, with a focus on affordable and equitable access for all

upgrading infrastructure and retrofit industries to make them sustainable, with increased resource-use efficiency and greater adoption of clean and environmentally sound technologies

supporting domestic technology development, research and innovation

significantly increased access to information and communications technology, and universal and affordable access to the internet

We have far too many exceptional partners to list here. Want to find a program in a country that particularly concerns you? You might not have known that you can search through our partners by region and fields of interest. This means you can look up all of our partners that address education in India, infrastructure in Indonesia, or livelihoods in Laos, to find the partners that match your exact interests and learn how to support them.

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Give2Asia

Local Knowledge Counts

Give2Asia strengthens communities throughout Asia by building trusted networks for charitable investment.

People investing in charitable programs strive to understand the local context and the impact of their giving. Give2Asia makes it possible to support local organizations in Asia addressing critical issues such as healthcare, education, livelihood, and the environment. We build long-term connections between donors and local programs in Asia by fostering trust and accountability on both sides of the relationship.

Give2Asia has a team of local staff, advisors, and partners that ensure projects are effective, results are transparent, and grant recipients are accountable. We report on activities to certify that projects meet the needs of the target beneficiaries and the donor, and we try to find new ways to expand sources of funding.